By Joshua Einstein
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In his September 16 opinion piece on Christie Whitman, a former NJ governor and EPA chief, Tom Moran, gets it wrong again. Moran states that “If you want fresh evidence that Donald Trump has turned American politics upside down, here it is: Former Gov. Christie Whitman, a lifelong Republican, is so appalled by him that she wants Democrats to take over the House.”
He then goes on to rightfully bemoan climate change and incorrectly advocate voting for far-left Democrats over responsible Republicans stating “if the scientists are right about the catastrophic risk we face, this issue alone is enough to peg your vote to” the Democrats.
Moran’s opinion editorial is an all-over-the-place hit piece devoid of inconvenient truths. In order to attack todays Republicans, from Trump lovers to Never Trumpers, social to fiscal conservatives, and everything in between, Moran paints a deceptive picture of a former GOP governor bravely standing athwart what the GOP has allegedly become. Yet, as Moran is undoubtedly aware, this is not the first time Whitman publicly attacked her fellow Republicans or attempted to undermine her party’s electoral chances.
Not only did she attack Mitt Romney, possibly the nicest person in politics, for not spending limited debate minutes on chastising hecklers in 2012, but this was after she had launched her then-new media efforts to get a third-party candidate on the ballot in all 50 states. That Whitman’s 2011 internet based campaign to build momentum behind a third party candidate by motivating millions of disaffected non-voters failed may or may not be a sad critique of our society, but it is not the sign of a formerly committed Republican party leader stepping away from the party only now as Moran pretends.
Moreover, Moran downplays Whitman’s own clarion call to vote for moderate Republicans running for Congress and attempts to use climate change as a moral bludgeon to force people to vote against the lower taxes and growing economy that is a united Republican run federal government.
If one looks at the scientific realities we must all live with rather than the attack politics Moran offers, we see a different picture than the one he paints.
Not only have carbon emissions risen across the European Union, Canada, China, and many other nations a party to the Paris Accords but, according to the EPA, the Statistical Review of World Energy, and the Energy Information Administration, we have surpassed our carbon emission decrease goals and lowered emissions without being subject to the job killing regulations of the accord. It appears that fracking, a technology originally developed for shale oil extraction, when applied to shale natural gas deposits has not only helped us achieve energy independence but has done more to reduce a carbon footprint than top down international agreements.
Moran’s purposefully incomplete history of Whitman’s past attacks on fellow Republicans and his attempted abuse of climate science are as old and rotten as Whitman’s recycled attacks on the Republican party.
The reality is that Democratic leadership, prodded by alt-left radical rioters and professional protestors, has ran to the extreme far left and advocates policies that wouldn’t just slow the current economic growth, but will cause a recession if not depression. Republicans, Independents, and common-sense Democrats must rally around the only candidates talking economic sense this election cycle; those candidates are Republicans.
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